Vehicle doors that may be opened and closed by way of movement generally parallel to the vehicle body have been installed on conventional vans and mini-vans at their side-rear location for many years. The mechanisms on these types of doors control the movement of the door with a guide provided in the vehicle body, such as at the roof line, along the bottom at the floor or in slots along the side of the vehicle body. Suggestions have been made to change the control mechanism and mounting of the door to allow the door to be attached to one of the A, B or C pillars of the vehicle. However, despite efforts for over 40 years, there are no motor vehicles that include such sliding doors in commercial production and on the road today. The development efforts are demonstrated by U.S. patent literature including: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,006,683; 3,051,999; 3,075,803; 3,520,083; 3,935,674; 4,019,775; 4,068,407; 4,135,760; 4,544,198; 5,507,119; 5,896,704; 5,921,613; 6,183,039; 7,658,438; 7,748,770; 7,765,740; 7,887,118; 7,896,425; 7,950,109; 7,950,719; 8,087,336; 2009/0200833; and 2010/0254638.
As discovered by the inventors hereof, changing the control mechanism and mounting position of the door creates a number of problems associated with door stability and the effort required to slide or move the door when trying to adapt the technology to modern automotive vehicle quality standards in large scale production runs. As such what is needed is a different solution.